
EXPERIENTIAL COURSE IN COMMUNITY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
For more than fifty years the idea of community has been at the heart of the PA. From the experiment at Kingsley Hall to its current therapeutic households, the PA’s work has always involved a shared attempt to deal with the hardship of emotional distress through the practice of living together.
When the PA was set up, its counter-culture mission was to find an alternative to psychiatric treatment and mental hospitals. All these years later the world has changed beyond recognition. Mental hospitals have mostly been closed down but they haven’t been replaced by a more enlightened and communal approach to suffering, as RD Laing and other PA founders hoped they would be. Instead cost-cutting quick fixes and a punishing work ethic are the order of the day. Community as a therapeutic ideal remains as elusive as ever in today’s fragmented, competitive and increasingly digital world. Yet the need for it is more and more urgent.
But it isn’t as easy as saying that community is good and marginalisation is bad. It is possible to feel at home in prison and in prison at home. Bands of outsiders – a gang or an addicts’ self-help group – may be much more tolerant, cohesive and healing than golf clubs or churches. The shared experience of adversity often creates a powerful solidarity, while shared privilege can be divisive and alienating. Thus thinking about community must also involve thinking about how one group impacts, threatens, ignores, deprives another. Community presupposes conflict.
This course serves as both as a stand alone certificate course and an introduction to the PA (including its houses)
You will encounter various modes of group work to explore group dynamics and what goes on between us. Seminars will frame topics to discuss but the heart of the course is experiential, comparative learning about group formats and dynamics – and their relationship to the politics of the wider society.
Held at the PA premises in Hampstead, north London, the course takes place over six weekends spread out over the academic year. It will be possible to apply to the one year Diploma in Community and Psychotherapy and the Psychotherapy training from the Experiential Course.
APPLICATION AND FEES
Application is by interview. Please contact and
The course costs £840 plus a £50 interview fee. There are a limited number of bursaries available for students surviving on low income.
For further Information contact courses@philadelphia-association.com or office@philadelphia-association.org.uk.
WEEKEND 1
Saturday 17 October
11 - 12.30 Welcome & Introduction to the course
Lucy King, Andrea Heath
1.30 - 3. The PA past and present
Barbara Latham
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou
Sunday 18 October
11 - 12.30 The ‘foreigner’, ‘homelessness’ and ‘homecoming’- with particular reference to the work of Heidegger, Levinas and Kristeva - in the context of Psychotherapy
Melike Kayhan
1.30 - 3 Consciousness Raising Group
Paul Atkinson
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou.
WEEKEND 2
Sat 28 November
11 - 12.30 Zoom and its discontents
Nick Mercer
1.30 - 3 What is Community ?
Jake Osborne
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou
Sunday 29 November
11.00 - 12.30 Suicide, community and trust
Ben Scanlan
1.30 - 3 Consciousness Raising Group
Paul Atkinson
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou
Winter/spring 2021
WEEKEND 3
Saturday 9 January
11 - 12.30 Gender
Ellie Guedalla & Andy Metcalf
1.30 - 3 Women’s narratives
Christina Moutsou
3.30 - 5 Experiential group
Lakis Georghiou
Sunday 10 January
11.00 - 12.30 Thinking about Solitude and Community with reference to the current pandemic
Alison Davies & Fliss Cadbury
1.30 - 3 Consciousness Raising Group
Paul Atkinson
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou.
WEEKEND 4
Saturday 6 March
11 - 12.30 Community Scapegoat
Del Loewenthal
1.30 - 3 Politics of Exclusion
Nicola Saunders
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou
Sunday 7 March
11 - 12.30 Psychoanalysis for movements of liberation
Ian Parker.
1.30 - 3 Consciousness Raising Group
Paul Atkinson
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou
Spring/summer
WEEKEND 5
Saturday 24 April
10.30 - 12.30 Family Constellations
Paul Zeal, Carol Zeal.
1.30 - 3 Social class and psychotherapy
Paul Gurney
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou
Sunday 26 April
11 - 12.30 Being Exiled
Salma Bhatti
1.30 - 3 Consciousness Raising Group
Paul Atkinson
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou
WEEKEND 6
Saturday 5 June
11 - 12.30 Rescued Communities
Emma Stroker
1.30 - 3 PA Communities - What was I doing there?
Hilary Cooper
3.30 - 5 Experiential group
Lakis Georghiou
Sunday 6 Jun
11.00 - 12.30 Art Therapy
1.30 - 3 Consciousness Raising Group
Paul Atkinson
3.30 - 5 Experiential Group
Lakis Georghiou